Garbage in, garbage out 

Posted 10:38 AM by Sean
I've had myself a good, self-satisfied chuckle or three over Clay Davenport's quixotic attempt to predict the final standings (via Rob) by simulating the remaining games of the season a million times (as if that's going to iron out the errors that would show up in a paltry 100,000 simulations). A couple of days ago, the supposed odds on the Angels were a ludicrious 8% or so, and if you got those kinds of odds in Vegas you'd've been brain-dead not to snap them up. Today's batch of simulations put the odds at:

Angels - 47.23610%
A's - 52.76390%

The only problem is that Davenport apparently forgot to add last night's Oakland loss to the mix; he still has them as 89-68. Hence, while the A's currently have 69 losses with four to play, his simulation puts them as averaging 69.7 losses. Whassamatta, Clay, didn't have your coffee this morning?

Update: Oakland's won-loss record has now been fixed in the simulation. The new numbers give the computer Angels a 57.9853% chance of winning the division. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the division will continue to be won exactly once.